


harvesting

by millimallow



Series: the world of owa [16]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Gen, mentions of death of a relative, vague horror imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 16:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17901380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millimallow/pseuds/millimallow
Summary: ch 17 of the world of owa anthology, set in sweetgrass.every season, the work must be done.





	harvesting

i saw the earth on fire once, though only in a dream.

there are fields of gold and brown and green lying for miles outside our house, seen through every window and in every dream but that. the colour of red is unfamiliar to me. i see it in the sun sometimes, only when it sets, or occasionally in the fragile petals of a wildflower growing amongst the scrub. regardless of how i feel, i know i’m not burning, and it splits my mind into two parts. one that’s dying, if only in its mind of minds, and one that lives.

when i come downstairs i can’t look my mother in the eye. 19 and looking to turn away from my family, retreating into myself for hours on end, even during the harvest season. they probably thought that this is the sort of thing you grow out of when puberty ends. of course, i was fine before. there’s no good explanation for how i feel or what happens when i close my eyes and find myself in a field of flames, so i let them have their suspicions of what bad things i could be involved with now. it’s worse when my mother brushes my hair, otherwise unbrushed, out of my eyes and sees the way they turn glassy when figures of flame and ash appear in the periphery of my vision. she says something i can’t hear from where i sit and murmurs worriedly, then puts the tea-kettle on to distract herself.

my father died of something like this. his vision was consumed by light, so that he thought he was going gradually blind. it didn’t kill him directly, but one day he just wasn’t there anymore. another day he came back- his body had been dredged out from the cattail-swamped creek three miles downstream, lifeless and soaked with the water. instead of burying him, my mother released his body to the medical institution the next town over for examination and post-mortal diagnosis. evidence suggested an accident. there was nothing wrong with his eyes. it was a matter of what he was seeing with them.

sometimes i go out, and i sit by that creek. seasonally, the sky will sometimes clear, breaking the clouds of this temperate land. but i’ll still have my brown wool capelet on, so i can stay warm in the night. and i’ll have a rope tied around my waist, tied itself to a stake hammered into the pale and fuzzy grass. that way i can watch the stream, for this is where the flames are quenched.


End file.
